Wednesday, May 25, 2011

**UPDATE**Aurora's crime up by one incident

AURORA | Major crime in Aurora last year jumped by a single incident, according to statistics released Wednesday.

Of the six major crime statistics the FBI tracks, Aurora had 11,760 incidents in 2010, up a single incident from 2009, when there were 11,759.

The six major crimes include murder, robbery, larceny, aggravated assault, rape, burglaries and motor vehicle theft.

The exact figures released Wednesday are only slightly different from preliminary data released in January but tell essentially the same story: After several years of crime reductions, Aurora’s crime leveled off last year with a very slight increase.

“It’s remarkable that the agency has been able to reduce crime 8 years in a row, and I guess we were destined to have a year when we couldn’t,” Aurora police Chief Dan Oates said. “You cant always be reducing it.”

The uptick was caused by jumps in larceny, which climbed from 6,945 to 7,090, and burglary, which climbed from 2,073 to 2,307. The numbers the other all the other crimes fell from 2009 to 2010, except murder, which stayed the same with 23 each year.

Aurora’s violent crime, was down 6 percent from 2009 to 2010, falling from 1,539 to 1,447.

While crime leveled off last year because of the spike in larceny and burglary, Oates said he didn’t believe the slumping economy was the reason for those two crimes seeing an increase.

Aurora’s statistics aren’t included in the preliminary FBI data released Monday, but a police department spokeswoman said Wednesday Aurora’s statistics should be included the final FBI data released in September.

Monday’s FBI stats have at least one glaring error.

According to the data, Denver had just 22 murders last year, well below it’s five-year average of about 40 per year and fewer than Aurora’s 23 murders in 2010.

But according to preliminary 2010 statistics from Denver police, Colorado’s biggest city actually had 33 last year. A spokesman for DPD this morning confirmed the FBI’s figures were wrong and said the data on the department’s website was correct.